Posts by Robin Sheat
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in your world there is no original thought, just derivative thought.
by your reasoning anyone who uses language is copying off people who developed words.Sorta, but not quite. I think there is original thought, but I think it all is inspired by other things. Whether it's fairy tales we were exposed to when we grew up, or what we read on some internet forum during the day. I think they all have a hand in providing inspiration, conscious or not. Now, most of those influences couldn't be pinned down at all, and that's fine.
However, I also think that re-expressing existing art in different ways, whether approved of by the previous creator or not is an important facet of art, and hence culture. The phrase 'social commentary' comes to mind.
As an example, take modern hip-hop music. It often contains samples from other songs. Or industrial music, which often contains samples from movies. People have been done for copyright infringement for doing this. The creator of whatever was sampled isn't going to lose out from this. Noone is going to say "well, I've heard that sample, I don't need to see the movie now".
Independant documentary makers have to be careful that they don't accidentally include a clip of The Simpsons showing on a TV somewhere, or they have to pay Fox ludicrous amounts for it. They have to be careful of incidental music playing, too.
In my mind, this is copyright stepping way beyond its goal: to promote the creation of art. In fact, it's hindering it.
Now, this is a different aspect of things than strictly looking at copyright terms, but I think they're all important.
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Not necessarily. I don't believe that The Forbidden Planet was ever hyped as being derived from The Tempest, despite the plot and characters being a very close (and clever) knock-off.
I wasn't aware of that. I might have to go check it out, I haven't been in the video shop for all too long. Need to start making a list of what I want to see.
Pretty much proves your point about creating new art from existing, just as Shakespeare borrowed from a variety of sources for his original play.
I bet it happens much more than you'd (or, maybe just I) expect. Just don't get me started on the people who were looking to patent (or copyright? I forget which) story plot types a while ago.
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surely a not published becomes public domain clause would deal with that, rather than stripping everyone of their rights.
I think you're approaching it from the wrong direction (or, at least, not the same one as me).
It's not stripping people of their rights. It's giving them rights for a limited time to encourage them to create more. There is no natural right to restrict free flow of ideas, it's an artifical right with the ultimate goal of enriching culture.
If you've had (say) 50 years to make money off that book you wrote, that album you recorded, why isn't that enough? It's more than that guy that bound the book got. He was paid when it occurred, and not at all after.
The whole social good argument doesn't really add up when compared to other endeavours, like land speculation and oil production. I'm up for some open source petrol.
So, because other systems aren't perfectly aligned with the needs of society, this one shouldn't aim to be?
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no, you could do it but you would have to contribute some reddies to the originator of the work, or get their permission. your work would not exist as referential if their work did not pre exist so it seems only fair to acknowledge it.
And their work wouldn't exist but for those that came before it, acknowledged or otherwise, and so on so forth. It's turtles all the way down.
Just because I'm inspired by them, doesn't mean that I owe them anything. I was inspired by a part of culture, most likely multiple parts. Just like they were.
I don't see the need for everything to involve a transaction. We (as members of society) want to see things be created in order to enrich society, make it better, and so we create a system to encourage people to create.
The incentive to create is time-limited control over the creation. This is an incentive because they can use that control to make money from the creation if they so choose. However, this scheme is provided for a reason. It causes more art to be produced that eventually makes its way to where everyone can take it, adapt it, work with it, learn from it, and change it.
By having too long copyright terms, that bargain breaks down. People can't absorb it and manipulate it, and use it to create new works unless approved by the copyright holder. That would be a sad state of affairs, not everything done should need to be approved by someone else.
Maybe what it comes down to is ownership of ideas. The moment you tell someone your idea, it's theirs too. I can't see why anyone would think they have the right to control what that person then does with that idea.
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How bout Mr Jackson hired some writers to come up with a new story. Why would that be so dreadful?
In net terms, society would have gained a new cultural artifact, and not lost the old one.So, copyright should be used to prevent people telling the stories how they want? That's not very good. Maybe I want to write a Biggles (or whatever) story because I liked them years ago. Why shouldn't I be allowed to adapt the characters and settings of the originals, most of them aren't even in print any more. Why should I have to negotiate with the copyright holder? Perhaps I don't even want to sell them, not everything is driven by money. Maybe I want to write them and stick them up for anyone to read.
A big hook for the LOTR movies was that they are LOTR movies. People know the story. A big hook for movies based on Shakespeare is that they are exactly that. If you force everyone to create something new, you risk losing your connection with the cultural history that you're from. Culture and shared stories aren't static things. They should be allowed to change as time goes by. People should be able to make adaptations.
Once something is written, it is out there. You don't lose ideas by my thinking of more based on yours.
Note that I'm (mostly) not talking about verbatim copying here. I'm talking about creating new art using existing art as a starting point, like almost everyone does.
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That becomes a choice. You could always contact the copyright holders- and if necessary (gasp, how unfair!) offer to pay royalties to publish it yourself!
(Assuming music for convenience) I don't want to publish it. I want to listen to it. Maybe remix it into something new to see how it sounds. Why should I not be allowed to do so? I mean, the original almost certainly would come from a long line of musical history, it draws from that, it uses it, and it adapts it.
Why do you not want anyone else to do the same?
And, what if the author is dead, and it's the music label that holds it now. They're not going to dig it out of the archives for me.
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Wah? If you can't get hold of an original copy, you can't copy it to start with. Let's say you want to copy and distribute it: "new access" is simply begging the question of whether you should be allowed to copy and distribute without permission.
Say it's 200 years later, and you've tracked down the one remaining copy of this interesting book from the past. You can't contact the copyright holder because they died a long time ago. Oh well, you can't do anything about it. Too bad. That book is now lost to everyone except those that get to read this one copy.
A slightly ludicrous situation, I know, but not too much I hope.
Let's say it's otherwise going to be lost to posterity: I think you'll find this is explicitly allowed under the (new) law.
Indeed, and that is a good feature of the new law. But why should it be necessary in the first place?
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J R R Tolkein's work has obviously just been redone and come to the big screen.
And if his estate had just said no? Maybe because they don't like movies or something. Society loses.
It is detrimental to everyone else to allow one person or group to control something that has become part of our culture for too long.
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why? no ones explained why yet. why is it necessary to expire it?
Because if it doesn't, then all new access to that content is lost when people decide to stop publishing it any more.
That's just one reason.
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Hmm. My view on why copyrights expire is simply to allow those ideas to go back into the pool of things that culture (i.e. everybody else) can draw upon, remix, make new, be creative from.
Take music - why should I not be able to take a song that meant something to people my age some years ago, and respin it to be from a different perspective, perhaps making it apply to more modern times? It's artistic (well, assuming I can do things with music, which isn't necessarily true), it's relevant and it's interesting to people. Just because it is based on something else doesn't make it any less so.
A great example of this is is that Romeo and Juliet move that came out 10 or 15 years ago. All the original lines, but applied to a modern situation. Were Shakespeare's plays tied up in copyright, society loses out because they can't do that.
This is the other side of the copyright bargain as I understand it. In order to provide them with an incentive to create, the copyright holders can control this sort of thing for a limited time. After that time, the ideas belong to everyone, and are free to be re-imagined, and in the process, more culture is created, more art is produced, and it isn't restricted to being totally original (which I posit doesn't exist).
There is nothing wrong with deriving from someone else's work, whether blatantly or subtly. By locking up ideas indefinitely, you reduce what can be created, what can be modified, and thus hurt culture by lowering the amount of art (in all forms) available.
So there needs to be a balance: encourage people to create, but ensure that the society that supports them and provides them with ideas to build on gets more out of it than a book with a pretty cover, eventually. Also consider albums and books that are still in copyright but aren't being published or released any more. How does that help anyone?
I contend that the long copyright terms are much to skewed away from being good for society.